Sinus Infection and Dizziness

A sinus infection can be bothersome enough. Your head feels like it’s about to explode, you feel like there’s a fever coming on and nothing seems right. When a bout of dizziness comes along for the ride, it is only fair that you would feel a little worried and feel the need to call your ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor. Why do a sinus infection and dizziness go together? In certain circumstances, unhappily, they certainly do. Our sinuses are internally connected to a passage that leads to our ear canals. Infections of our sinuses can easily set up camp in our ear canals. And as everyone knows, our sense of physical balance comes from the way our inner ears are designed. An infection of the ears can easily send our balance sensing inner ear parts out of whack.

It’s not just a when a sinus-related ear infection affects our balance sensing mechanism that we experience dizziness either. It can happen even when the infection goes nowhere near the inner ear. But you don’t have to let it go as far as all that. When you come down with a sinus infection, going down to the ENT doctor for a prescription to get rid of it should help you keep far enough away from any dizzy spells. What you need to do then is to catch a sinus infection right when it’s starting. The moment you sense a little pressure around the middle of your face, a little mucus and a heaviness that seems to radiate from around your cheeks, you know that you’re coming down with a sinus infection. Take steps to deal with a sinus infection and the dizziness should never have to be what comes out of it.

What are the sinuses exactly? Around the front of your face, in the bony matrix of your skull, bordering your nose, are this series of little cavities – strung out like an archipelago of islands. These are supposed to just be filled with air – to act as resonating chambers to help your voice project. When you get an infection, mucus fills these chambers up. And of course when it does that, your face feels swollen and painful. But how exactly are a sinus infection and dizziness related? One reason it can come about is that a sinus infection can get people to have headaches and feel exhausted. It is not uncommon for exhaustion to lead to a little unsteadiness.

When an infection progresses, it branches out into the eustachian tubes that connect the nasal passage to the ear canals. Those tubes are needed for the ears to be able to drain excess fluid away. Tubes that are blocked by a spreading sinusitis infection will no longer be able to drain fluid out. With mucus and fluid building up in the tubes, you can only imagine how it would upset the vestibular system in the inner ear and succeed in throwing your sense of balance off. Anything that leads to an infection around the ear canals can lead to dizziness. Since a sinus infection is one of them, dizziness is sometimes seen to accompany it.

It’s pretty simple to get rid of a sinus infection and dizziness, luckily. All you need are a few ENT physician prescribed antibiotics, plenty of fluids, and rest. Sometimes, a little allergy treatment could help prevent the problem before it even comes up. If you should ever come down with a sinus infection that gives you a bout of dizziness, be sure to not do anything where you need to be alert – such as driving.